from the beck-and-call dept

For years now, we've pointed out that ICE -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- has this weird habit of acting as the private police force of various big sporting leagues, almost always timed to big sporting events. Every year, right before the Super Bowl, for example, ICE seizes a bunch of websites. And ICE also goes way overboard in seizing physical merchandise, even if that's at least slightly closer to its mission. But it's been painfully obvious that ICE more or less sees itself as an arm of these sports leagues, rather than employees of the US government, and thus, the public. Last year, I filed some FOIA requests about ICE seizures leading up to the Super Bowl, but had them rejected on the basis that it was an ongoing investigation.

However, law professor Rebecca Tushnet is much more persistent than I am, and has been pursuing documents related to ICE seizures in the courts, and has had the court force ICE to hand over details -- including the not-at-all surprising, but still horrifying discovery that the NFL gives ICE guidance on what to seize, and it includes obvious parodies which are clearly not infringing, as they're protected by fair use. This is from the manual that the NFL provided ICE:

And, sure, perhaps it's true that NFL licensed merchandise won't favor one club over or another or make derogatory use of another's marks... but it's easy to argue that this is parody and thus not infringing. Just because it's not licensed, doesn't automatically make it infringing. But the NFL doesn't care. And I guess that's not surprising that the NFL doesn't care -- but it's astounding that ICE just agrees to follow the NFL's marching orders. Because unlike the NFL, ICE should actually follow what the law says, and not what a very wealthy sports league wants to happen.

As Tushnet points out in response to this:

So, what do we know? (1) Despite ICE's initial claims to me via its spokesperson and a lawyer, ICE relies only on industry guides to identify counterfeits, not on any independent sources. (2) Those industry guides identify what they don't like, not what is within the scope of counterfeit goods. (3) Most of what ICE seizes is truly counterfeit, but when it seizes parody merchandise, it implicates First Amendment interests in free speech.

Considering that this is ICE, who has a history of seizing blogs based on big industry claims, it seems quite clear that ICE couldn't care much less about the First Amendment interests of the public. Just the profits of big industry.

from the to-secure-the-nation,-starting-with-the-trademarks dept

The Kansas City Royals' long-delayed return to competitive baseballing coincided with one of the most ridiculous raids ever conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. Birdies, a Kansas City lingerie shop, was "visited" by DHS agents -- working in conjunction with ICE -- who seized a number of panties emblazoned with a handcrafted take on the Royals' logo, along with the phrase "Take the Crown."

The agents performing the raid didn't seem all too enthused about their participation in this panty raid, according to the shop's owner, Peregrine Honig.

She says you could tell “they [DHS agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

Honig also pointed out that many local law enforcement officers had purchased lingerie, including the supposedly-trademark infringing panties, without expressing concerns about IP violations or counterfeited goods.

The printing shop that made the panties for Birdies was also visited by DHS agents, who threatened the owner with six years in prison for "breaking copyright law" unless he consented to a warrantless search.

All of this culminated in plenty of unfavorable press coverage highlighting Homeland Security's panty raid and how much "safer" we all were thanks to its intercession on behalf of the Kansas City Royals and Major League Baseball.

On October 16, five days before the raid, an anonymous ICE officer from the Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRC)—in the documents released, names of officers were redacted; an appeal has been filed to release the names of the officers involved—wrote an email with the subject "Op Team Player - world series update," referring to Operation Team Player, ICE's partnership with U.S. professional sports leagues to intercept counterfeit goods, including tickets and merchandise.

The unnamed officer wrote, "They [the Kansas City office] are trying to get their numbers up and will accept any leads for controlled delivery in Kansas or Missouri, even if they do not meet the criteria because the AUSA Prosecutor is eager."

For the want of increased "numbers," the DHS lowered its standards to raid a lingerie shop. That's basically all there is to it. Without the prompting of an "eager" AUSA, this may never have happened.

Within hours of the raid, the story was already spreading across the internet. A blanket statement was composed for handling inquiries from the press: the usual "Go Team IP Enforcement" jingoism that accompanies ICE's sporting event-related raids performed in close partnership with the MLB, NBA, NFL etc. But someone in the email chain knew the usual stuff wasn't going to be nearly as effective in this case.

The headlines at the bottom of the email pretty much say it all. We're going to be all over the news tomorrow for the wrong reasons. We'll obviously try to spin this as an opportunity to discuss IPR, but the panty raid jokes will make it hard.

Apparently, ICE/DHS felt this particular narrative might be beyond its control. So it tried to drag Major League Baseball down with it.

On the same thread, at 9:57 PM, someone wrote, "We need MLB to step forward and throw some support for what we do. Let us get with our MLB contact and we'll be proactive as we can re: media." Someone with the title "Executive Associate Director of Homeland Security Investigations-ICE" replied, "Great idea. Let's move on it."

As Gordon notes, perhaps the hilarious part of the email chain is the agency's severe underestimation of the internet's thirst for stories containing (a) abuse of government power, or (b) women's intimate garments -- especially any combination of (a) and (b) that's capable of composing its own headlines.

[S]omeone else on the same thread exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet's interest in panty raids by writing, "So far it appears to have just localized press. Hopefully, it won't make it out of the local news bubble."

Well, hope in one hand and hold seized panties in the other, as they say. Still, one agent appeared to believe that the government's panty raid was nothing more than a judicious use of Homeland Security assets and taxpayer dollars.

Excellent work, which speaks for itself!

Sure does. That's why press coverage was unanimously negative. ICE, DHS and an "eager" AUSA joined forces with MLB to generate additional acronyms like "WTF" and "BS." Americans were protected from unauthorized sportsball underwear -- something than can only serve to increase their respect for intellectual property rights... and the sprawling, often-thuggish bureaucracies that enforce them.

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Last summer, our writer Tim Cushing put together something of an omnibus post of stupid DMCA takedown requests, none of which probably deserved their own unique post. One of the individuals he highlighted later went on something of a wacky defamatory crusade against Tim, posting blatantly false information about him, and claiming that Techdirt is actually owned by some telecommunications company I'd never even heard of, that is also a patent troll, or something. But now another entity in that very same post has also decided it's upset about the post, and has taken a slightly different strategy.

The company in question is Andromedical, makers of the creatively named "Andropenis," which is (you guessed it) a penis pump. The company appears to do two things aggressively: push a highly questionable "study" claiming its device is effective... and issue questionable takedown demands. Tim was mocking the fact that Andromedical was asking Google to take down results from the competing Bing search engine, but also the fact that it appeared to be promotional images of the product. So, why are we subject to a takedown notice?

BRING ON THE KITCHEN SINK OF LEGAL THREATS!

In what is announced via email as a "DMCA notice," (and sent to a personal email address of mine, rather than our publicly listed DMCA agent email address) is apparently a combination notice of all sorts of things we didn't actually do:

I write on behalf of the Legal Department of Andromedical, S.L. Company, as an Intellectual Property abuse report to your company. This email is part of a Counterfeit Notification to INTERPOL and must be considered as an official Cease and Desist, Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notification.
We have detected that your website is using our trademark Andropenis® and our copyrighted images without being licensed to do so. It is illegal to use Intellectual Property (IP) without license in your website, whether or not you are selling the actual device associated to our copyrighted properties. Thus, you are infringing the law by using trademarked and copyrighted properties of Andropenis® without license and without IP rights. Please, proceed to delete immediately the following pages and the images in them from your website:

Yeah, so, first of all, it's a DMCA notice, which covers copyright and not trademark. The fact that we don't have a license is meaningless either way. First of all, we can use the ridiculous Andromedical or Andropenis name as much as we want without violating the trademark, because we're using it in a manner that is clearly descriptive of the product, and not in commerce. It's also not being used in a manner to confuse consumers or dilute the brand. So, just the fact that it suggests merely mentioning the name without a license is infringing is ludicrous and wrong. You're doing trademark law badly.

On the copyright question, we did post an image of some of Andromedical's own promotional images, but in a manner that was clearly fair use. It was part of our news article, explaining Andromedical's abusive DMCA practices, and as part of showing the kinds of images it was taking down, we showed a few thumbnails of those images. This is obviously fair use, so Andromedical can take its DMCA notice and pump it.

Then we get to the whole "Counterfeit Notice to INTERPOL" -- to which I can only say... huh? There's no counterfeiting. We're not selling any products in our post -- legitimate or counterfeit. We're just posting a story about the company, which is perfectly legal to do.

Nevertheless, the company insists that if we don't take down our article, it will follow through with a list of increasingly aggressive/ridiculous tactics:

You have one week after the reception of this email to delete any and all images of Andromedical and/or Andropenis® products, any and all Andromedical and/or Andropenis® trademarks, and any and all Andromedical and/or Andropenis® information and references from your websites. Legal actions against your company will be stopped if these actions are undertaken. If you fail to do so, our Legal Department will:

Contact your web hosting service to have your website removed, as you are infringing their Terms of Service by using their server space for unlawful purposes.

Contact INTERPOL, as your company is committing an international crime by trafficking in illicit goods and counterfeiting. (http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Trafficking-in-illicit-goods-and-counterfeiting/Trafficking-in-illicit-goods-and-counterfeiting).

Wait, we're "committing an international crime by trafficking in illicit goods and counterfeiting" because we posted a story mocking your stupid DMCA takedown requests... and your response is to send an even stupider and more ridiculous takedown demand? Yeah, that's not very smart. You're also lying, which may be an issue for you given that the DMCA forbids making false statements in DMCA takedowns.

And, just to be clear: we're not selling any stupid penis pumps, counterfeit or not. Did you miss that simple fact? I imagine Interpol might wonder why you're wasting their time making false reports.

Next up, the email lists out the various trademarks in different jurisdictions that the company has -- all of which is totally meaningless and unimportant because writing about your company is not violating your trademark in any way, shape or form. That's not how trademark works.

And then the closing:

Andromedical S.L has not signed a valid license contract in this seller’s favor to use the trademarks of Andropenis® or its copyright. The names referred and its images pertain, only and exclusively, to Andromedical S.L.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Sincerely,
Eduardo Gomez de Diego

Yeah, that's great. Except, again, we're not selling anything, and we're not violating your trademark or your copyright. Your "good faith belief" is either not in good faith at all, or just wrong. Our use is clearly authorized by the law.

Finally, note that the opening of the email threat said that it was coming from "the Legal Department of Andromedical." So, that would imply that our friend Eduardo Gomez de Diego is a lawyer, no? So, then, why does he show up as a doctor stumping for an Andropenis penis pump? And the author of the "study" that claims that Andromedical's penis pump actually "works"?

In summary, I'd argue that Eduardo's legal claims are about as strong as his scientific and medical claims.

from the because-fuck-you,-we've-got-guns dept

Homeland Security's Immigration & Customs Enforcement group (ICE) has a history of seizing stuff without understanding even the most basic concepts around intellectual property. After all, these are the same meatheads who seized some blogs for alleged copyright infringement, and then had to return some of them over a year later, after they realized it was a mistake. ICE also has a history of using big sporting events to kiss up to the multi-billion dollar sports organizations by shutting down small businesses, protecting Americans from unlicensed underwear. And, of course, what bigger sporting event is there than the Super Bowl. Every year they make a bunch of seizures related to the Superbowl, and this year was no different.

ICE agents gleefully were patrolling Phoenix looking for clothes to seize. But there was just one, rather large, problem with how they went about it. It appears that the people in charge of all this, didn't know the first thing about the "law" they were supposedly enforcing. Seizing counterfeits is about stopping trademark infringement. But not everything using a trademark is infringing. Trademark, after all, is a form of a consumer protection law, designed to protect people from buying one thing, believing it's another. If there's no likelihood of confusion, then ICE isn't supposed to be seizing it (and, yes, there is also dilution of trademark, but ICE isn't supposed to be seizing products that dilute someone's trademark -- just those that are "counterfeit"). But that's not, apparently, how ICE sees things:

The profane debasing of a mascot — and really anything that denigrates a team — is guaranteed to be contraband, said Daniel Modricker, a spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That “Yankees Suck” T-shirt you put on for special occasions? If it uses anything that looks like a team or league logo, it probably constitutes trademark infringement.

Almost all of that is wrong. Using someone else's trademark to comment on them is a perfectly legal use -- and not at all counterfeit. Pretending otherwise gets into some pretty sketchy First Amendment areas, as using a trademarked word, phrase or image to criticize someone is considered protected. But, not to ICE. As Rebecca Tushnet explains:

"Profane debasing"--and when did mascots become sacred?--is not confusing. I don't think ICE has authority to seize diluting merchandise, and anyway very few of these will be using the profaned mascots "as a mark," meaning the dilution exceptions for parody and criticism apply. This is a blatant misunderstanding of the law, being perpetuated by a federal official with only the small reassurance that federal agents won't come down and rip a previously purchased shirt off your back.

Of course, the small time vendor with a table on the street isn't likely to challenge the federal government for stealing his perfectly legal shirts that "debase" a mascot. So ICE's Daniel Modricker gets to spew his ignorant and wrong statements and get away with it. Because ICE is ICE, and this is generally how it goes about its business. It has the guns and it gets to decide the law, no matter what the Constitution has to say about it.

And, now it gets even more bizarre. As we noted, the original trademark application appeared to come from Saban Capital Group, the company controlled by media mogul Haim Saban. Saban's lawyers reached out to explain that... the trademark application appears to come from someone pretending to be Haim Saban or his company. Whoever it is (and we've reached out to them) has apparently set up a fake "Saban Capital Group" in the British Virgin Islands, and has filed over 200 trademark applications, some in the name of Saban Capital Group (and some as others). In retrospect, there are some hints that something is not right if you dig deep into the trademark application, including the hotmail email address and the fact that the application is signed by "Tiwhk." Also, it's being sent from Ann Arbor Michigan, rather than LA where Saban Capital Group is actually based. But, almost all of that can be explained away as just some old fashioned way of doing things and/or from a remote/subsidiary address or something.

And, really, who the hell files trademark applications in someone else's name? The whole idea is bizarre, so it didn't even cross my mind.

Saban's (actual) lawyers agree, noting that the real Saban would not "actually do something as foolish as this," and they have no idea who is actually doing it -- but whoever it is has apparently filed over 200 trademark applications. The real Saban Capital Group's lawyers say they're investigating and suggest that the filer/s "appear to be infringers, or counterfeiters, or hoaxers or all of the foregoing" and they "intend to prosecute them to the full extent of the law." I don't see 200 applications, but there are a few others, such as this one, using Chinese characters, which the application claims means "Big Mouth Monkey" which they want to put on clothing (they show it on a pair of shoes). I have, in fact, confirmed that it does, in fact, say "Big Mouth Monkey" with someone who can read Chinese. So, at least that is accurate. And there's this one for a stylized version of the name "Paul Homme" (I have no idea who that is). Or this one for "BIG FACE" (no further explanation needed).

Either way, I've emailed the Hotmail address behind these filings, but as of this posting have not heard back. The real lawyers for Saban seem perplexed by the whole situation as well -- as do multiple trademark experts I've spoken to. No one's quite sure why anyone would file trademarks under someone else's company's name, but it adds yet another element to the crazy law school exam question we had in the original post. Here might be a case where actual trademarks are being violated (that of Saban Capital Group). Hell, I would bet some high priced lawyers might even try to figure out a way to argue that publicity rights are implicated here, though I'm not sure I'd recommend that...

Either way, we'd like to apologize to Haim Saban and (the real) Saban Capital Group for implying that they would file a questionable trademark on a public domain monkey selfie for use on clothing (including wedding dresses) as demonstrated by a photoshopped Gap catalog photo. And, "Tiwhk," if you're out there, please contact us. We'd love to know your side of the story...

from the that's-not-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

Not this again. For years, we were perplexed by the war on mod chips, which could be used to allow people to play pirated games, but also had plenty of legitimate uses as well, especially for developers and hackers. The same was true of the war on smart card readers. Yes, they could be used to get pirated TV, but they were also useful for lots of other, perfectly legitimate projects as well. The latest, however, appears to be a Microsoft update with some new drivers that were completely destroying devices that have fake FTDI chips. People started noticing that right after the Windows update devices using those chips were suddenly dead. Bricked. It's not that they wouldn't connect any more -- it's that the software update actively bricked the devices and you can't get them back.

FTDI chips are quite popular with hackers and there are plenty of them out there -- both real and fake. And, quite frequently, developers/hackers have no idea if their FTDI chips are legit or not, because they just buy devices that include them, and they assume they're legit. But the drivers in that Windows update didn't care and bricked any one using a fake FTDI chip. As Ars Technica notes, this really sucks for a bunch of hackers who never even did anything wrong.

The result of this is that well-meaning hardware developers updated their systems through Windows Update and then found that the serial controllers they used stopped working. Worse, it's not simply that the drivers refuse to work with the chips; the chips also stopped working with Linux systems. This has happened even to developers who thought that they had bought legitimate FTDI parts. It can be difficult to tell, and stories of OEMs and ODMs quietly ignoring design specs and using knock-offs instead of official parts are not uncommon. As such, even hardware that was designed and specified as using proper FTDI chips could be affected.

Every USB device has a pair of IDs. One, the Vendor ID (VID), is allocated by the USB group. Each vendor has its own unique VID and uses that VID on every USB device it makes. The second is the Product ID (PID), allocated by the vendor, with each distinct chip type having its own PID. Windows uses the VID/PID pair to figure out which driver a given piece of hardware needs. The counterfeit chips use FTDI's VID and set the PID to the PID of whichever chip it is they're cloning (FTDI has a range of similar parts, each with their own PIDs).

The new driver reprograms the PID of counterfeit chips to 0000. Because this PID does not match any real FTDI part, it means that FTDI drivers no longer recognize the chips and, hence, no longer provide access to them. This PID is stored in persistent memory, so once a chip has been reprogrammed it will continue to show this 0000 PID even when used with older drivers, or even when used with Linux.

It's not entirely clear if this is something FTDI did on purpose or not (though, their comments below suggest they did), but it is worrisome, and it's simply not okay -- whether it was on purpose (in which case it's potentially illegal) or not (in which case it's just bad).

Sherwin Siy, over at Public Knowledge does a nice job explaining why copyright (or other IP laws) are never a legitimate reason to break a device -- even if a contract warns it might happen (as is apparently the case with FTDI).

The fact that disabling countless devices without warning can harm millions of innocent users and manufacturers should be a screaming sign that this is the wrong thing to do. And if they’re doing this deliberately, this is wrong not just in the sense of being unethical, but illegal, too.

This is something that people seem to forget in the IP space, and also in the technology space, which makes it unsurprising that we see it here. It’s the same impulse that leads people to ask if they can shotgun a drone that strays onto their property (No, no more than you can torch a car that parks in your driveway), or whether you can destroy the computers of people who have illegally downloaded your song.

So whether or not FTDI has any trademark rights, copyrights, or other rights in whatever the knockoff chips are copying, the actual physical chips themselves are the property of their users, and FTDI doesn’t have the right to break them. A French vintner can’t stroll down the aisles of an American wine store with a hammer, shattering bottles of “California Champagne.” Roving gangs of Nike enforcers can’t rip fake Jordans off the feet of passing kids. And we don’t have Givenchy shock troops marching down Canal Street taking flamethrowers to fake handbags. If your IP rights are being infringed, the proper course of action is to go to court, not take the law into your own hands.

Unfortunately, in this era of intellectual property maxmalism, people seem to forget these things. They assume that if you have a "fake" chip then obviously it's "okay" to break the device, because they falsely seem to believe that copyrights and trademarks and the like give the holder "all the rights over everything," rather than a limited set of rights over certain things. FTDI's response to all of this (including removing the driver from the latest Windows update) suggests (but does not outright claim) that it did this on purpose:

As you are probably aware, the semiconductor industry is increasingly blighted by the issue of counterfeit chips and all semiconductor vendors are taking measures to protect their IP and the investment they make in developing innovative new technology. FTDI will continue to follow an active approach to deterring the counterfeiting of our devices, in order to ensure that our customers receive genuine FTDI product. Though our intentions were honourable, we acknowledge that our recent driver update has caused concern amongst our genuine customer base. I assure you, we value our customers highly and do not in any way wish to cause distress to them.

Honorable intentions or not, counterfeit products or not, actively going in and breaking the property of others is not an acceptable response.

from the bunnie-was-right dept

Techdirt has been keeping an eye on the world of "shanzhai" companies for a while now. The term originally meant those places in China that were outside government control, and so, by extension, it referred to Chinese outfits specializing in counterfeit goods. But shanzhai companies are moving on, as this fascinating piece in The Atlantic makes clear:

Shanzhai used to refer to knock-off retail, and later end-consumer electronics, such as mobile phones of major brands like Nokia, Motorola and Ericson, often specifically designed for non-Western markets in China, South East Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa. The ecosystem grew rapidly and by 2010, it was producing 200 million phones annually and was responsible for a quarter of the global mobile phone market. Since then, the shanzhai ecology has moved beyond cloning and enabled a wealth of iterative innovations including dual-SIM for frequent travelers to avoid roaming charges, seven-speaker phones for workers to listen to music at construction sites, and custom-designed phones for migrant populations unable to afford the latest smartphone.

Alongside those areas, here's an example of what's happening in the currently-fashionable sector of smart watches:

WPI [the Taiwanese electronic sourcing company World Peace Industrial] and other solution houses create gongban [standard circuit boards], which provide common electronic functions including Bluetooth connectivity to mobile phones, and sensors to measure the wearers' movement, as well as monitor heart rate and other vital bodily statistics. These gongban are designed to fit into a variety of gongmo [standard cases] that are ready to be branded on order. The flexibility to mix and match gongban and gongmo enable companies to quickly put together their own smart watches with customized functions and styles for various niche markets. Today, customers of WPI ship close to 100,000 smart watches per month.

That is, the shanzhai system is starting to adopt a highly-flexible approach that allows customized products to be designed and manufactured extremely quickly from sets of standardized parts. This has much in common with free software's modular developmental methodology, and next-generation shanzhai companies are also borrowing open source's business models:

That is, WPI gives away the basic designs to encourage their uptake, and then makes money from supplying the large open ecosystem that it creates by doing so. As Andrew "bunnie" Huang predicted, China's shanzhai sector has moved on a long way from simply copying, and is now innovating in multiple ways that industries in other countries could usefully learn from.

from the really-now? dept

We've discussed in detail in the past how different states' attorneys generally work: they pick a company they want to shame, for their own political benefit and just start making accusations against them and demanding they "answer" for them, even when they have no legal basis to their arguments whatsoever. Usually, one AG will start this, and then dozens of the others pile on as well, and they just keep putting on more and more pressure -- again, without any legal basis whatsoever -- until companies feel the need to "settle" to shut the AGs up, and then the AGs celebrate with lots of press coverage about how they brought down some big, bad company. It's kind of amazing how often we see this samepattern.

It appears the latest target of a bogus attack from Attorneys General, starting with Mississippi's Attorney General Jim Hood, is Google. Hood, apparently, has found some infringing and counterfeit goods online (shock! horror!) and has decided that Google is responsible for this:

"On every check we have made, Google's search engine gave us easy access to illegal goods including websites which offer dangerous drugs without a prescription, counterfeit goods of every description, and infringing copies of movies, music, software and games," Hood said. "This behavior means that Google is putting consumers at risk and facilitating wrongdoing, all while profiting handsomely from illegal behavior."

Hood didn't buy Google's explanations that it only removes content from search results in a narrow set of circumstances, pointing out that Google blocks child pornography and has removed content that glorifies the Nazi party. "Why will Google not remove websites or de-index known websites that purport to sell prescription drugs without a prescription or provide pirated content?" Hood asked.

Of course, Hood has no legal mandate over copyright. At all. But, what the AGs normally do -- and Hood is doing here -- is use their broad, vague mandates towards "consumer safety" to pretend they have a mandate.

What Hood is really doing, however, is not protecting consumers, but showing off his own technological ignorance of how search works. Yes, you can find infringing works via Google. But finding that content isn't Google's fault, but the fault of those who put that stuff up on the internet. A good Attorney General would use that information to go after the people actually breaking the law by putting such works up. But, you know, that takes work and actually proving someone broke the law. By blaming Google instead, it takes away all of the actual work and having to prove that someone actually was guilty of counterfeiting/infringement. And, of course, it can only lead to censorship. If Google is somehow ordered to magically know how to stop such content from being found, the only way to do that is to vastly overblock, removing tons of legal content.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Just about every denomination of US currency has been counterfeited at some point. But there are some really good copies out there (aka supernotes) that are extremely difficult to detect. In response, every few years, the government has to issue new bill designs that are harder and harder to duplicate. Here are just a few interesting links on detecting fake money and issuing new currency.

from the if-only dept

One of the nastier tricks of copyright maximalists has been to lump together "counterfeiting" with "copyright infringement" in an effort to conveniently jump back and forth when making silly arguments. Basically, they can argue that copyright infringement is a huge issue, because of the massive amount of unauthorized sharing that happens online. But they have a lot of trouble showing real harm. On the other side, counterfeiting really isn't that big of a problem when you look closely at the details, but there are a few, extremely limited cases (faulty counterfeit airplane parts, some fake drugs) where there could be real harm. So if you lump them all together you can claim "massive problems" with "real harm." But that doesn't work if you look at them individually.

We recently wrote about some Canadian politicians introducing a bill to get Canada in compliance with ACTA, despite the fact that ACTA has been totally discredited around the globe. Some political opponents are now pushing back on that, calling the bill in question an attempt to get ACTA in "through the backdoor." However, in response Canadian Industry Minister, Christian Paradis, just keeps repeating the "counterfeiting" mantra and ignoring the entire ACTA elephant in the room. Amusingly, Paradis seems unable to even admit that there are concerns here:

During Question Period on Monday, Borg asked Industry Minister Christian Paradis directly if the bill paves the way for ratification of the discredited treaty:

Mr. Speaker, last
July the European Parliament rejected the anti-counterfeiting trade
agreement over serious concerns about the regressive changes it would
impose on intellectual property in the digital age. Yet on Friday, the
Conservatives introduced a bill in the House that would pave the way for
the ACTA without question. Canadians have concerns about goods being
seized or destroyed without any oversight by the courts. Will the
minister now be clear with Canadians? Are the Conservatives planning to
ratify ACTA, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, we
are very happy to have introduced an anti-counterfeiting bill in
the House. Counterfeiting is a growing problem in Canada.
Counterfeiting deceives Canadians and is linked to
security-related issues. So it was our duty to modernize the
legislation to ensure that we can end counterfeiting, so that
Canadians are not deceived, and to provide better security.

Mr. Speaker, a
number of countries have rejected this unacceptable agreement.
The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement - ACTA - was drafted
behind closed doors and would incriminate the daily users of
cultural content. This agreement will turn our border officers
into instant copyright experts, without the adequate legal
support. Canada must seriously study the problem of
counterfeiting. However, the failure of Bill C-30 means that
Canadians do not have faith in this Conservative government. Is
Bill C-56 not simply a way to support ACTA through the back
door?

Mr. Speaker, let
us be clear: Bill C-56 is a way to support and protect Canadian
families.

Counterfeiting is a growing problem that must be stopped.
Counterfeiting deceives Canadians and poses risks to the safety
of Canadians. We must ensure that the legislation is updated and
appropriate in order to equip the authorities with effective
tools to fight counterfeiting, which is exactly what was
introduced on Friday. If the NDP is responsible, I hope they
will support us.

See the talking point? When asked about ACTA just lie and repeat "counterfeiting is a serious problem" over and over and over again, despite little proof to actually support that. And, when really challenged, pull out the "it's for the children" card by saying that it's needed to protect families. Yes, the families of the US-based executives of the legacy entertainment industry.